This is the second installment in a series. Part I looked at the history of populist movements in American politics and can be found HERE.
Part II: Exploring a Growing Elephant
Mass grassroots movements are always difficult to describe, characterize and evaluate. By their very nature they involve people from different backgrounds and with different agendas coming together around certain issues which are not likely to be very clearly defined. People who expect them to function in accordance with the culture of commercialized professional politics will always find them lacking. One of the fundamental reasons that such movements arise in the first place is because large numbers have lost faith in the ability of commercial politics to deal with the problems faced by ordinary people.
So just who and what is America's newest mass political movement? Let's start with the name. Occupy Wall Street is the name that has been used so far. It began with a group of people physically occupying a geographic space in lower Manhattan where there is a street named Wall. The name of this street has long been a symbol of the power and control of international finance. At the dawn of the 20th C it took over that function from the City of London and J P Morgan with his big red nose became the poster boy.
There are now related groups being formed all over the country with names like Occupy San Francisco, Occupy Nashville, Occupy Tulsa. The people who have organized the ongoing demonstration in Manhattan are operating in a culture of participatory democracy that is reminiscent of the new left of the 1960s and can be described as reflecting anarchist culture and tradition. Here is one description of how things are being done there. The Anti-Politics of #OccupyWallStreet
While the proliferation of other groups are being formed as an expression of solidarity with the purpose of the original OWS group, it seems unlikely that people in Tulsa and Nashville will do things in exactly the same way. A growing number of established labor unions are making declarations of support for OWS. Unions of course have their own traditions and culture and they are different from anarchism.
For most Americans Wall St. is a concept and an attitude not just a place. It is quite conceivable that a national anti-Wall St. movement could be sustained. Much of the political agitation that gave rise to the new deal was specifically aimed against the bankers of Wall St. If that is going to happen then the various local groups will have to coalesce into some kind of coherent national network.
Much attention is being called to the role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter in the organization of this movement. There are some interesting parallels with the various movements that have sprung up in the Arab world, not only in terms of social media but also in the prominent role of young adults facing difficulties with employment and debt. The internet has changed the world and continues to change it. A part of this economic crisis is tied to the realignment of the global economy and the internet has played a significant role it that. There is no reason that it can't have a major impact on grassroots political organization.
Street demonstrations alone do not change political structure. They can be effective in building the kind of popular support that fuels an ongoing political movement. They also tend to upset people who are disturbed by anything they perceive as a threat to law and order. The movement to establish a whole new decentralized style of doing politics seems unlikely to take permanent root in a large industrialized society. However, at times such as now when a large portion of the society feels that the existing political structure has become seriously dysfunctional, then decentralized disruption is likely the only way to stir the pot.
How one views the present situation and what one thinks should happen depends on how the problems are diagnosed. Economic issues are not the sole concerns. There are also important political and legal issues about the way things get done in this country. However, those have been with us for some time and it is economic difficulties that are creating the immediate pressure.
In 2008 many people were inclined to view this as another post war recession that would clear up in time without requiring radical intervention. Even in 2008 that view required the use of rose colored glasses. US recessions have been changing since the beginning of the 1990s. One of the important ways that they have changed is the time for employment recovery has become progressively longer. Three years later, anybody who claims that this situation is going to take care of itself is not to be taken seriously. Regardless of what specific proposals are being advanced by people in this movement, it seems accurate to me to suggest that there is broad agreement that the system is broken and that neither of the major political parties has an effective program to fix it.
At the moment I think that ascribing to that basic premise should be sufficient for alliance with the movement. Things must of course advance beyond that point. That will require a lot of dialog and discussion. That's not something that I expect to control. My next installment will look at the relationship of the Occupy Movement to the Democratic Party.